Tags

Top 10 Most Exciting Things for Infor Licensees in 2018

In early February, Infor and select preferred partners, including Velocity, sponsored the Infor Winter Showcase in St. Paul, MN. Our view is that this event, geared toward current licensees of the Infor Lawson products, offers the best value of any conference in the Infor ecosystem. Each session is relevant, the fees are paid by the partners, and the days are well organized. This year’s Winter Showcase allowed attendees to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and intimately get to know Infor’s products and product roadmaps. On day one, we heard from Todd Stratton, Vice President of Product Development, and he announced the top 10 things that should excite the Infor ecosystem in 2018:

10. Lease accounting changes

9. Enhanced user interface

8. Global deployments of Infor and localization

7. Treasury management

6. Next generation payroll

5. Inventory intelligence for Healthcare

4. Analytics with Birst

3. TrueCost product becomes GA for healthcare

2. Coleman for AI

1. v11 / CloudSuite Financials and Supply Management momentum

The investments made in the Infor product, the standardization upon the Landmark platform, and the capabilities of Infor OS are exciting.

As we reflect on Infor Winter Showcase and help our customers pave the way towards digital transformation, Velocity has put together our own top 10 insights from the 2018 Infor Winter Showcase:

1. Infor v11 Choice & Flexibility

Infor v11, also known as Infor CloudSuite Financials and Supply Management, is delivered as the same code in multiple delivery models. Licensees can choose on premise deployment, in a partner cloud (e.g., Velocity’s), or Infor’s cloud. Regardless of your decision, licensees get access to the same product functionality.

2. You Can Stay on Infor v10 For Now

Infor 10 is still a supported platform and a date for decommissioning mainstream support for v10 has not been announced. With Infor typically providing 5 year’s notice, Infor 10 will likely be supported through all of 2022.

3. Next Generation Payroll is Coming

The next generation of payroll, re-written in Java on the Landmark platform will be GA later this year but only for customers in a SaaS model from Infor, and not for customers with employees in California. So, look to 2019 for when the next generation of payroll from Infor really picks up steam with some early adopters with perpetual licenses.

4. TrueCost for Healthcare Could Drive v11 Adoption

TrueCost for healthcare organizations shows significant promise and could be the product the market needs to drive adoption of v11. Working in concert with the new GL structure and its dimensions and using data from multiple sources, TrueCost will offer providers the ability to look at cost by patient, cohort, and for service bundling. This could replace a lot of bolt ons and spreadsheets with cost allocations that healthcare providers live with today. Watch this space as true cost accounting for healthcare comes alive.

5. Analytics, Analytics, Analytics!

Everyone wants analytics and Infor’s message about their product direction is getting clearer. Infor Business Intelligence is a viable product but the future investments all seem to be with Birst which provides analytics and reporting for Infor data as well as data from other sources using a columnar database. A Data Lake can help organizations with unstructured and/or historical data from legacy systems.

Dynamic Enterprise Performance Management (d/EPM) is the solution for financial performance, budgeting and planning. If you want to update figures and change data in the reporting solution (when you edit and revise the budget by department), d/EPM is the right tool. If you want a cloud based tool that works with v10 and v11, Birst is the appropriate application and is available for customers on-premise, in a partner cloud, or in Infor’s cloud.

6. Kronos is Being Replaced

Infor’s Workforce Management is replacing Kronos in multiple hospitals. The product has matured and the mobile strategy at Infor, where they are providing bite size functionality for specific functions (e.g., apply for a job), knits the whole solution together to make Infor Workforce Management a viable competitor to Kronos.

7. Infor v11 is Gaining Momentum

Of the 57 organizations that have signed up for v11 (CloudSuite Financials and Supply Management), 22 are net new logos for Infor. With v11 being GA last year, Infor has won 22 net new logos in about six months.

The majority of the action to v11 is within a very committed and dedicated install base and healthcare is still #1. 25 of the 57 v11 projects (44% of total) are being conducted within healthcare organizations. The next largest vertical is Retail, with 12 customers (21% of total).

A key component to Infor’s strategy is offering a modern cloud deployment option (SaaS) and a private cloud option. For organizations that like choice and flexibility, Infor could be the right solution, and Velocity offers private and public cloud deployment options for Infor customers that have or opt for a perpetual license.

8. Infor Health Rebrand

Infor is committed to the healthcare market, which is why they are rebranding this division as ‘Infor Health’. This rebranding recognizes the broader spectrum of healthcare to include the insurer market and health sciences, as well as the provider market where Infor has always been strong.

9. v11: Upgrade or Migration?

For the current install base considering 11, Infor is still working on its messaging. The opening session emphasized v11 is “an upgrade, not a migration”. Yet, the services team at Infor has built a “Migration Factory” and the Landmark application used to transform a licensee from v10 to v11 is called “Infor Migration Console.” This will cause some temporary confusion in the market while everyone will be hoping the upgrades in progress (about 35) are wildly successful.

10. v11 Consulting is Key

Every upgrade to v11 will require business consulting to not only take advantage of the new features, but also make the appropriate decisions for mapping the current GL structure to the new GL structure. A clear plan will need to be made on implementing the new security model, developing the new reports, and taking full advantage of the reporting and analytics tools. Yes, you can upgrade as is - but if you are going to take your business team through a large project, why not improve while you move to Infor v11?